I was perusing my blog reader and came across a few posts about this photo challenge. Intrigued, as I am about all things photography, I decided to check it out. It's a photo challenge hosted by Home is Where you Start. She gives a weekly assignment and has a twist. I liked the twist.
So I decided to enter.
This photo is of my daughter, Mackenzie. I have a love/hate relationship with it. I love it because she's beautiful. I hate it because I took it on her ninth birthday and I'm against my babies growing up. LOL
Well it's our first official Weekly Wrap-Up of the new school year. School has begun and my baby is a fourth grader. Where does the time go?
Our first week went pretty well. We're starting off slowly, I haven't added in all of our subjects and I left one day open for summer outings. It went with only a couple of glitches. Even wee Babe was relatively well behaved. For her.
We started off with a unit on South America using a South America Geography Unit by Evan Moor and reading about Simon Bolivar and Jan Matzeliger. Reading about Matzeliger in Shoes for Everyone has been particularly interesting. It's about a half black South American inventor who came to the U.S. for more opportunities. It documents his struggles with prejudice ten years after the Civil War. We were most saddened with how he was treated when he was looking for a church in Massachusetts. It was a good lesson in how important it is to take what you learn in God's Word and put it into action. Mackenzie got a much clearer picture of what it means to let your light shine for Jesus.
Our other Sonlight reading includes Moccasin Trail and By the Great Horn Spoon. Both are great books that show the importance of family and what life in early America was like. Moccasin Trail, in particular, teaches a lot about the exceptance of other cultures.
We started The Star-Spangled State Book as our main geography curriculum this year. Mackenzie seems to be enjoying it and she did great on her first quiz. And, with the way it's set up, she's totally self-suffient with it. She calls it "fun."
We even remembered to do our Sonlight mapping assignments and put in our timeline figures for the week. Those were two things we forgot to do a lot last year. LOL
We started our first lesson in Exploring Creation with Zoology 1: Flying Creatures of the 5th Day . Our first lesson is covering What is Zoology and she's been learning about how and why scientists classify animals. We also started our Learn 'N Folders that we got to go along with it. It's a cross between notebooking and lapbooking. We opted to do this instead of the standard notebook pages that accompany the study.
Math and language arts were review so nothing much to report there. Apparently she didn't forgot much of her math as she aced her first test. We haven't started spelling yet. Maybe next week or the week after.
For art this week we used How to Teach Art to Children and we studied lines. It was a nice review from what we studied in I Can Do All Things. There are things that I like about both curriculums so I'm alternating between them.
Here she is sharing her "strawberry" that she made during her free time. LOL
We have yet to start our artist/composer studies and spanish. We're going to start studying Mary Cassatt next week I think. This year she will be making a notebook about the artists and composers. Hopefully we won't get off track. =o)
So, all-in-all, we had a great first week. We even had time to catch a movie with friends and a couple of play dates. Not a bad way to start the year.
Be sure to check out what others are doing over at the Weekly Wrap-Up hosted by Kris.
I did a couple of digital scrapbook pages of some of our recent "big" events.
Kayleigh moved out of her cage to a toddler bed. And it was a cage because she started jumping out of her crib, and landing on her head, at 15 months so I put one of those crib tents on it. She's been surprisingly good about staying in her bed all night and during her nap. Not once has she gotten out before I have arrived to greet her. That, my friends, is a miracle!
All the papers and elements are from the Bloom Kit created by Erica @ COAH. She's always creating something that make my life better. =o)
And this one is of Mackenzie's friend's first sleepover. We got the honor of hosting her. Ava was terribly excited and didn't miss her mom one bit. LOL Kind of like Mackenzie at camp last week. Came home saying she didn't miss me at all. Sigh...
Life was a tad different for Kayleigh this week. She got to experience life as an only child. Big Sis was away at church camp for the week. It was freaky quiet without any unison screeching.
It was also our trial week for a more purposeful Tot School. Next week Mackenzie starts back up with school, (sniff, sniff my baby will be in fourth grade) so I really want to get Kayleigh in more of a routine with regards to her 1:1 time. Like all tots, she's more apt to play nicely by herself for a spell if you "love tank" is filled up.
Her "spirited" personality has really had an effect on our homeschooling. Since Kayleigh's arrival we've been just scraping by with the basics. This year I want to add our extras back in.
I plan to start Tot School first thing after breakfast, before Mackenzie starts her work, and hope that it will alleviate some of our issues with Kayleigh's behavior. Then she's going to start playtime in her room. Then she'll join us again and play with a sensory bin or playdough while we continue our work. Then maybe an educational dvd. Although I don't want to use the tv everyday. We're still going to be winging it somewhat. LOL
At any rate, we had a full week of "schooling." I even joted down a list of things I hoped to accomplish. We actually did a few of them. Everything else was changed as our whims guided us. Clearly, that's how Tot School seems to work best for us.
My plan is to focus on one letter per week, to work on recognition. We did 'A' this week. It was nothing exciting. A couple of crafts and some puzzles or games will be the extent of our "literacy" activities. Oh and we're making an alphabet book.
I'm also starting a morning routine with her. Stuff like singing a good morning song, talking about the weather, practice our colors, and the days of the week. Mackenzie is going to be my helper with this. And we're going to focus on one nursery rhyme/week during this time. One day, when I figure out exactly how I want it to go, I'll make a more detail post about how this is going to work.
We started with our morning routine each day. I gave her a little pointer to keep her hands occupied. Our nursery rhyme for the week was Jack Be Nimble. She's pretty good at reciting it now. And we acted it out by jumping over a glue stick. We're going to be putting our nursery rhyme printables into a book too.
Next we read. I gave each day of the week a "focus skill" like numbers, letters, shapes, colors, etc. All that means is on Wednesday we read books about numbers and, maybe, had a number activity or craft. Sorry no pictures of the reading because I had a munchkin on my lap. I'll list what we read this week at the end.
Then we did some sort of muscial or gross motor activity. One day we played with our LeapFrog Guitar and danced to our Baby Einstein Sing & Play CD. Kayleigh likes to use her LeapFrog Guitar as a violin. She does this everytime she plays with it. It cracks me up.
We read a couple of versions of the story of Noah's Ark this week, because A is for Ark, afterall. Then we did this Noah's ark craft I created. Twice.
I originally made it because Kayleigh likes to use glue and I thought she could just glue some animals from a magazine. Except, I went a little crazy with our school room makeover and tossed our magazines. So no animals. I just made some from clip art when I did the ark. While I was doing it I thought about how cute it would be if I made the windows/doors in the lift the flaps and glued the animals behind them.
That was great until I set out to do it. She's two for the love of pete. She can't glue around the edges so they'll fit behind the flaps. She just wants to load on as much glue as she can and then slap it down. So I didn't cut out the flaps. She colored them and glued them whever she wanted. On the front. But if you have an older child they might like making the ark with flaps. We did it again because she wanted to. This time I just gave her the ark and some animal stickers I had.
We also made the first page in our alphabet book. This week's page was A is for Ants, from Totally Tots. We made thumb print ants all over an A. The she drew "legs." Yes, I know that nothing about those ants is anatomically correct. I do know how many body parts and how many legs they have. It's just that Kayleigh didn't care. And a shout out to Wendy who gave me TONS of free scrapbook paper, including the picnic checks used in this craft.
We had lots of fun pounding pasta. I've been meaning to try this idea, from Carisa, for about a year now. We finally did it. She loved it.
Our tot trays included:
A small spaces activity, drink stirrers in a sugar shaker.
A shape matching activity made to look like the rainbow lollipops that Kayleigh loves. She's never eaten one though. LOL She did really good with this. She was able to name almost every shape.
Lastly, spooning "treasures" into a themed icecube tray with a long spoon. In case you're wondering, she's sitting on a new box of diapers. I don't know why. She insisted though. LOL
Our sensory bin for the week was her old baby bathtub filled with water in the backyard. Recycling...LOL
This week The Homeschool Village is asking "How do you celebrate back to homeschooling?" This in an interesting question for us, as we don't actually do anything special to celebrate getting back to homeschooling. We start in August, next week, to be specific. We do this for a very specific reason.
We prefer to celebrate the government schools going back!! We live for the day that the malls, museums, and amusement parks are crowd free again. So we start school early in order to take advantage of the beautiful weather, and lack of lines, in September and October.
Once the other kidlets are back in school we, along with our friends, start heading back to Busch Gardens every Friday. It is very exciting for us because we avoid it like the plague during "summer vacation." And if the weather's bad we just head to one of the many museums that we've also been avoiding during the summer madness months.
There's nothing better than having the whole museum or park to yourselves. Woot!!
Pop on over to The Homeschool Village and check out how other celebrate. Don't forget to share your traditions!
The curriculum day is probably my favorite day of the blog hop. What homeschooler isn't a curriculum junkie? I have a whole page on my blog dedicated to our curriculum. You can view it here. We're very excited about fourth grade! And if you're interested in what my toddler "uses" click here.
I can't wait to see what everyone else is using. Click the picture above to join in the blog hop.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Oh, it's that time again!! Time for one of my favorite blog hops of the year. The Not Back-to-School Blog Hop. A time to share your curriculum, school space, students, and how you do things. Consider linking up and sharing how school works at your house. I'm always inspired by this blog hop. Hop on over to Heart of the Matter and join in the fun. You can ever check out last years hop.
as our main geography curriculum this year. Mackenzie seems to be enjoying it and she did great on her first quiz. And, with the way it's set up, she's totally self-suffient with it. She calls it "fun."
. Our first lesson is covering What is Zoology and she's been learning about how and why scientists classify animals. We also started our 
and we studied lines. It was a nice review from what we studied in 
and danced to our 
. Kayleigh likes to use her 
, which we have not mastered yet.
, 
, and watching 
.
